Louise Hoon

After pre-universitary schooling in Maastricht, I started a bachelor of Arts in French and Dutch linguistics and literature at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. My master’s thesis in the field of Dutch sociolinguistics was a discourse analysis of election programs to the Dutch 2012 parliamentary election. My interest for politics and society incited me to combine these studies from 2012 onwards with a preparatory program, followed by a Master of Science in Political Sciences at the VUB, obtained with great honours in 2014. In my master’s thesis, I investigated the relationship between Euroscpeticism and consensus democracy.
The field of interest for my doctoral dissertation is the comparative study of party-based Euroscepticism in EU-member states. I want to investigate eurosceptic party's anti-system critique, its origins and the reasons of its apparent electoral success. In short, I would like to clarify what eurosceptics are really sceptic about, and how this critique relates to political trust in institutions. And moreover, how can we accurately define and measure euroscepticism.